Faith and Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Faith and Philosophy - Essay Example Likewise with Hegel, the notion of 'death' or 'is not' is always associated with its opposite, namely, 'being' or what is. To maintain that 'god is not' as Nietzsche argues, supposes too that she also is. Where some individuals are willing to risk their lives – to be 'what is not'', they must have faith in the reasonableness of this assumption. This parallel between Kierkegaard and Hegel will be kept in mind in the following analysis. What will be outlined first, is his notion of the truth of subjectivity in Kierkegaard. This is an important consideration for what will follow, given that it is an argument which best describes what existence ‘does not mean’, so to speak. It will be argued that his notion of subjectivity is born out of a sense of alienation from ‘traditional’ Christianity, and from Platonism, and that ‘faith’ itself is coextensive with ‘subjectivity’. Following this analysis of the truth of subjectivity, and wh at he means by subjectivity and the ‘form’ of isolation associated with the ‘knight of faith’. ... subject’, and it constitutes a theory concerning the meaning of existence – that is, what it means to exist, and moreover, it represents the activity of faith itself. In this respect, faith is not so much a concept as it is an activity or form of praxis. It is 'extra' philosophical or beyond philosophy in contrast with faith, as a form of praxis. The nature or essence of existence, is for Kierkegaard, ‘paradoxical’ [Kierkegaard 32]. It is paradoxical, because it can be described in two contradictory modes, namely, the finite and the infinite. And, implied by the notion of the infinite, are a number of similar or identical concepts. For examples, concepts such as the ‘eternal’, or ‘continuity’, ‘identity’ the ‘absolute’, ‘god’, and so forth. This paper will first give an analysis of a fragment in Kierkegaard’s within the context of his work titled Fear and Trembling, a work which recount s the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac taken from the Torah or the Old Testament (Genesis), and in brief, it concerns a father (Abraham) who is called upon by Yahweh or God to make a sacrifice of his only son Isaac, which is in turn, a parable which on the surface, concerns God’s testing Abraham’s convictions, courage, faith, obedience, and sense of obligation toward himself or herself. What transpires in this story, is that God calls upon Abraham to sacrifice his only son, and so he proceeds to carry out the task, only to have God or Jehweh stop him at the last moment and tell him that he has proven his ‘faith’ to him. In turn, God blesses Abraham for his faith. Before remarking on Kierkegaard, a brief remark will be made about the biblical story, and that is that it is quite short, and in the Revised Standard Edition (and not the Hebrew), there